


Cold

by justanothersong



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cold Weather, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers Has PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 05:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12623812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: He was shaking. Shivering. His body was curled in on itself, nearly clinging to you.





	Cold

He didn't tell anyone. For the longest time, he never said a word, not even to you, and you thought you had known everything about him. He would just shrug and smile politely if anyone asked, shake his head and claim he didn't really remember. And you believed him -- everyone believed him.

But that was before, when this thing between you was just starting and you hadn't gotten very close. It had been in the late spring, when it seemed summer had come early and the sun beat down almost every day.

So you'd had no idea, really. Until the weather began to change.

 

It started with gloves, and heavy jackets in the fall. The weather didn't immediately seem to call for it, but Steve took to wearing a scarf almost any time he was out of doors, even as early as late September. The jackets became thick warm coats and he was always bundled up by mid-October, and Tony teased him that he could lighten up; after all, it wasn't as though he'd catch a cold. Steve would laugh it off but still seemed determined to dress warmly, and by the time the snow was falling you noticed that he seemed a little thicker around the waist. You overheard Bucky teasing him once, about wearing long johns beneath his jeans, and it made you wonder.

After all, you had known him for years by then, and thinking back? He had always been this way.

 

Your relationship had moved slowly. Part of it was wanting to be careful, to not overwhelm your friendship and ruin what you already had. But beneath that, you had the suspicion that Steve just wanted to savor it, to spend time doing the simple things: dinner dates and movie marathons, and nights spent wrapped up in each other in a low light room, kissing and touching and learning each other’s bodies in a new, more intimate way. 

It was nice. There was none of the pressure you usually felt when you were dating, meeting someone new and trying to find out if your lives and personalities could blend. You were never self-conscious, or embarrassed, or even worried. Because at the end of the day, it was just Steve. The guy you worked with. The guy you fought alongside. The guy who you always teased for dipping his french fries in honey, and who would rather write with a pencil than a pen because he liked the sound of the lead scratching against paper.

You were enjoying yourself. Luxuriating in it. Steve kissed you for the first time back in June; he didn’t take you to bed until early December. You’d been so nervous then, because it was him, it was Steve, and if it didn’t go well it could ruin everything. It wasn’t as though it was your first time -- his either -- but your first time together meant something a little more than a romp with a casual serial date. But every time you started to panic, Steve would kiss you or run his fingers through your hair, make you smile and laugh and put you at ease in a way you’d never experienced with any other lover. You knew then that this was something special, between the two of you. You realized that you didn’t just love Steve, your friend, the soldier you knew would always have your back. You were in love with him, all of him, the man that he was and the man he might become. 

 

That was when it really became apparent. You began spending more nights in his place at the Tower; you’d never moved in yourself, not officially, and still had a small studio apartment in Chelsea running nearly three grand a month. Pretty steep for a bed you rarely slept in, but you weren’t going to push and moving into the Tower now, even into your own suite, might seem like jumping the gun. You made it home maybe once or twice a week, and hadn’t slept there in better than a month when you finally connected all the pieces.

You’d thought you’d felt it before, woken to feel Steve shivering beside you, but you’d passed it off as sleepy confusion on early waking and forgot it almost as soon as it happened. But this time you were wide awake, still reading by a dim bedside lamp as Steve had fallen asleep beside you, and you couldn’t ignore the full body tremble sweeping through him, even as he laid cuddled up against you, burrowed beneath a thick quilt with his head having drifted from his pillow to rest against your stomach.

He was shaking. Shivering. His body was curled in on itself, nearly clinging to you. And that’s when it hit you: the coats and the gloves, the way you’d find the bed piled with extra blankets when you had spent a night away, the thermostat turned up higher and higher as it got colder and colder outside. New York was in a deep freeze, a blanket of snow crusted over with thick ice as the temperatures dropped well below zero and Steve, dead asleep and unable to hide it anymore, was freezing.

“Steve?” you said softly, resting your book on the bedside table without bothering to mark your place. You reached out and ran the back of your fingers down his cheek, feeling it cold to the touch in spite of the comfortable warmth of the room. “Steve, baby… wake up.”

It took a few moments but he stirred, blinking open bleary blue eyes and peering up at you in confusion. The shivering stopped as soon as he was aware of his surroundings and his face flushed; it broke your heart to realize he was embarrassed.

“Are you cold?” you asked, reaching to brush his hair out of his face. “I can get another blanket out of the closet.”

“M’fine,” Steve mumbled, pressing his face against the soft cotton of your nightshirt. “Sorry if I disturbed you, I was just… I don’t know, dreaming or something.”

You hummed and continued to run your fingers through his hair, feeling him start to relax against you. It was such a silly thing, you thought, for him to be seemingly so embarrassed about.

“Steve?” you asked again.

“Mmm?” came his response, caught somewhere in the comfortable dreamy space between sleeping and awake.

“What do you remember?” you asked carefully. “From before. From when you went into the ice.”

He immediately stiffened, and you felt a slow shudder begin at his shoulders and sweep down his body, even as he tried to fight it.

He looked up at you then, frowning. “Not a lot,” he replied, and you shook your head.

“Steve, baby, it’s me,” you reminded quietly. “I know you’re holding back. You can tell me.”

 

He laid his head against you again and sighed heavily. You just waited, listening to him breathe and watching the way the light of your lamp caught in the slight stubble on his cheeks, making him almost seem bathed in gold. He needed to talk about that -- you knew that now. 

Everyone was always so concerned about Bucky, once he had returned. Everything he had gone through. All of the horrors he remembered, the torture and the evil things he had wrought with his own hands without a single thought of his own in his mind. And you were just as concerned about him as the others and Steve always were. Bucky had been through hell; he might have been in a safe space now but he needed to heal, and you all wanted to be there for him.

Then the realities of Tony’s problems came to light: the panic attacks, the PTSD, all of it. And your heart broke for him, even more so when Pepper turned tail and ran from it. So again, you circled the wagons, and everyone put in some time and effort to help him find his footing again. It was slow going, but he was getting better. Learning to ask for help.

That, it seemed, was a lesson Steve had yet to learn.

He was so kind. So caring. So unerringly loyal. He never reached out and it seemed no one, not even you, ever thought to stop and ask if he was okay.

“I don’t remember much,” he admitted quietly. “Sometimes it’s clear but other times it’s more muddled…”

You hummed again in response, knowing he had more to say and not wanting to interrupt.

“Mostly, I remember the water,” Steve said, and his voice wavered. “It was so… so cold. I’d never… I’d never felt anything like that, not even when I was small and sick and the winter was bad… It was so cold, but it burned, freezing me from the inside out. The cold just… it just eats at you, chews at your skin until your muscles go stiff and your bones are aching and the water, it fills your lungs and feels like thousands of knives just stabbing and freezing…”

He choked back a sob, clinging close against you, and the shivering was starting again. You could feel the dampness of his tears against your nightshirt.

“I know it’s not real,” he told you, voice muffled where he had turned inward again, clinging to you and hiding his face as he spoke. “I know it’s not real but sometimes, sometimes I just get so cold and I can’t get warm, no matter what I do. Blankets or hot showers, nothing works, and I wake up and I’m so cold and I start shaking and I…”

Steve trailed off and you gently slipped yourself from his grip, sliding down closer so you were face to face, seeing the anguish on his face, the disappointment he must have felt in not being the perfect strong little soldier like he pretended to be.

You were crying now; you couldn’t help it. You loved him so much and you had completely missed this part of him, he had it hidden so well.

“I’ll keep you warm,” you told him, wrapping your arms around him. He clung to you and you kissing him, rubbing slow circles in his back after pulling the quilt tighter around the both of you. “I promise. I’ll always keep you warm.”


End file.
